Your First Shortcut in Five Minutes

The Shortcuts app has a reputation problem. It looks like a programming tool, it opens to a gallery of things you never asked for, and most people close it within a minute. That's a shame, because your first genuinely useful shortcut takes about five minutes to build — and once you've built one, the whole app stops being intimidating. So let's build one together: a single button that checks live traffic, calculates your drive time home, and texts it to the person who's waiting.

What You're Building

One tap. Your iPhone works out how long the drive home will take right now and sends a message like 'On my way — home in about 25 minutes' to your partner, your roommate, or whoever keeps dinner warm. No typing while you walk to the car, and no 'almost there' texts composed at a red light. It's a small piece of automation, but it's one you'll actually use — which is exactly what a first shortcut should be.

Before You Start

• The Shortcuts app — it comes preinstalled on every iPhone. If you deleted it at some point, re-download it free from the App Store.
• Your home address saved somewhere your phone can find it — the cleanest place is your own contact card. Open Contacts, tap your name at the top, tap Edit, and add it under Address.
• The person you want to text, saved as a contact with a phone number.

Build It

1. Open Shortcuts and tap the + button in the top-right corner of the Shortcuts tab.
2. Tap the search field, type 'travel time', and add the action called 'Get Travel Time'.
3. In the action that appears, tap the pale 'Location' token and enter or select your home address. Expand the action's options to confirm the mode is set to Driving.
4. Search for 'Send Message' and add it below. Tap 'Recipients' and choose your person.
5. Tap the 'Message' field, type 'On my way — home in about ', then tap the 'Travel Time' variable that appears in the bar above the keyboard to drop it into the sentence.
6. Tap the shortcut's name at the top of the screen, choose 'Rename', and call it 'Text My ETA'. Tap 'Done'.

That's the entire build: two actions and one variable. The first time you run it, iOS will ask permission to access your location and to send messages on your behalf. Approve both — those prompts appear once, not every time.

Put It One Tap Away

A shortcut you have to dig for is a shortcut you won't use. Pick whichever of these matches how you actually hold your phone:

• Home Screen icon — open the shortcut, tap its name at the top, and choose 'Add to Home Screen'. It gets its own icon like any app.
• Widget — long-press your Home Screen, tap Edit, then Add Widget, search for Shortcuts, and pick a size. Your shortcuts appear in it automatically.
• Action Button — on iPhone 15 Pro or later, go to Settings → Action Button, swipe to 'Shortcut', and select 'Text My ETA'.
• Siri — just say the shortcut's name. 'Text My ETA' is already the voice command; no setup required.

Where This Goes Next

Once the ETA text feels routine, duplicate the shortcut and point the destination at work for morning traffic checks. Swap Driving for Transit if you commute by train. Add a second recipient for family logistics. The pattern you just learned — an action that gathers information, feeding a variable into an action that does something with it — is the skeleton of nearly every shortcut worth having. And when you're ready for shortcuts that run themselves with no tap at all, the automations guide in the Complete library picks up exactly where this one leaves off.